The effects of topic familiarity, prelistening activity, and question type on Korean junior high school students' listening comprehension

This study investigated the effects of topic familiarity, prelistening activity, and question type on the listening comprehension of Korean junior-high school students. A total of 178 subjects, comprising four randomly selected intact classes, participated in the study. The subjects listened to four folktales recorded by a native English speaking kindergarten teacher. Two of the folktales appear in Korean language trade books and were deemed familiar. Two tales were chosen from the folktales of Serbia and Jamaica and were deemed unfamiliar. Subjects were divided into four groups with respect to prelistening activity--vocabulary preteaching, pictorial context, prequestioning, and control (no treatment). Following the listening activity, students were given a 40-item multiple choice test--20 items for the familiar tales and 20 items for the unfamiliar tales. Two question types were employed; 20 items were explicit and 20 items were inferential. The secondary Level English Proficiency (SLEP) test was given to students one week prior to the experiment to assess whether all classes were at the same or a similar level of English proficiency.;The data were analyzed using analysis of variance with topic familiarity (familiar and unfamiliar) and question type (explicit and inferential) used as within-subject variables and prelistening activity (vocabulary preteaching, pictorial context, prequestioning, and control) as the between-subject variable. The analysis revealed four significant effects: (1) Students performed better on familiar stories than on unfamiliar stories. (2) The different types of prequestioning activity led to differential effects on listening comprehension, with the students engaging in the prequestioning producing the highest mean score. (3) Subjects scored better overall on explicit items than on inferential items. (4) Topic familiarity increased the mean score for listening comprehension more dramatically in association with explicit items than with inferential items.